I am always wary of file only shoots, invariably the end result is not what the customer actually wants. However, two shooters $1,500, three shooters $2,100, the third shooter shouldn't cost you more than $200.

Clients don't normally have gear requests, well I have never had one, but getting a feel for what they want and expect, and the venues needs from a lighting point of view, can mean rental makes sense.

One of the preferred vendors of the facility had a vendor that has done many shoots at the wedding location offered a price of $1700 which I think does include some editing. We saw a photo book of his work and it was pretty good stuff.

BTW Neuro, why does LV silent shooting results in the lights not firing?

In live view mirror is up and the shutter is open, so an electronic first curtain is used. I believe live view silent shooting complicates the timing of the shutter with the flash, but I'm not positive. My speculation aside, the manual does state that a non-Canon flash will not fire if live view silent shooting is set to Mode 1 or Mode 2 (p.189 of the 5D3 manual). It is set to Mode 1 by default.

Since you can't get buff stuff, I'd get the elinchrome kit because of there rotalux softboxes. Then again the profoto mods are one of the best avaliable. I'd probably buy the profoto D1 kit with some softboxes.

D1 kit is unfortunately out of his $1200 budget, but he could easily get a pair of Profoto Compact 600R's with built in pocket wizards for that price.

I tromp around outside to shoot pictures and get my stuff dirty. I don't shoot portraits much. But when I do, I borrow AB800 units from a friend that bought a couple Buff kits with modifiers, stands and everything. They work great, simple and easy to use and durable too. If budget allows, get the Einsteins. If not, the AB800s are great too. Get some trigger cables and some Yougnuo wireless triggers and start learning how to use it all. Don't spend too long sweating what to buy, you can't really go wrong with the Buff stuff. As RLPHoto said, they work well and don't change color or intensity so your post work will be easier.

You won't really know what you want until you dive in and start using it all. Just get some experience with something and then tweak it as you go. Don't over think it. Keep it simple.

Buy a kit, get some reflectors, a background and get to work making some money. Then see what tweaks you need and keep on going. Refine your technique. Hone your craft. It's your knowledge and talent that is making the pictures, not some fancy lights.

No one will know what kind of lights you have, they'll just see pictures that are well exposed and visually appealing. Only photographers analyze pictures to determine how the lighting was used. Most folks just look at the pictures to see what they need to see and move on. Have fun with it!

I recently disposed of half a dozen Profoto 600 Compact monos, two 2400w/s Profoto floorpacks and a boatload of Profoto accessories and modifiers and replaced them with half a dozen Einsteins, PCB modifiers/accessories/triggers etc and really couldn't be happier.

The one thing that could tempt me back to Profoto would be if the B1 played nicely with High Speed Sync. Does it?